MarTech

Stats in a new report from Blockthrough suggest that more than 750 million devices (mobile and computer) were running ad blockers in Q4 2019. The increase is pegged at roughly 64% over the past three years. Continue Reading →

Over the past couple of weeks, Google has made some unsubtle changes to its search results pages. To say that the line between paid ads and organic search results has been blurred is to understate in the extreme. Continue Reading →

There’s an article in today’s New York Times with the title, “The Advertising Industry Has a Problem: People Hate Ads.” It says, “the advertising industry faces an ‘existential need for change,’ according to a blunt report published on Monday by the research firm Forrester. Now the agencies must ‘disassemble what remains of their outmoded model’ or risk ‘falling further into irrelevance,’ the report concludes.” Continue Reading →

According to eMarketer, the U.S. search ad market is expected to grow to $55.17 billion (up 18% YoY). Roughly 73 percent (approx. $40 billion) of that goes to Google. But Amazon is on fire. Its search business is growing fast and it is expected to reach almost 13 percent this year and nearly 16 percent Continue Reading →

Facebook is being pilloried for its unwillingness to remove a paid advertisement by President Trump’s reelection campaign after Facebook was notified by the Biden campaign that the ad contained false statements about Joe Biden and his son. On the surface, this seems simple, and Facebook’s decision not to remove the ad seems wrong. But there is much more to the story. Continue Reading →

Are data-poor organizations doomed? We’ve been running a data science experiment over the past few months. We were shocked, but not surprised by what we learned. Continue Reading →

Online publishers in the EU were all excited about Article 15 of the EU’s copyright directive which allows the press to request money from platforms like Google and Facebook when copyrighted material appears on their respective sites. France transposed the EU’s copyright reforms into a national law that takes effect October 1st. There’s only one Continue Reading →

Facebook has been under relentless attack since the Cambridge Analytica scandal in early 2018. Broadcasters and news publishers have declared open season on Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, and other senior executives at the company. And while not quite ubiquitous, #deletefacebook pops up every time there’s a story about data privacy. The EU has fined them, the US is trying to figure out how to regulate them, and the notion that free services should be absolutely free (as opposed to checking a box on a terms and conditions page that allows the free service to use your data as payment) is gaining traction. Whether or not Facebook deserves the scrutiny it is under is a great topic for another article. Today, I want to have a look at alternatives. If you don’t like Facebook, what might work for you? Is the time right for the reemergence of focused social networks? Continue Reading →

Shelly Palmer sits down with Carolyn Everson, VP Global Marketing Solutions, Facebook to discuss data privacy and trust at CES 2019 in Las Vegas. Continue Reading →

It’s you against the bots and trolls. And, although you may not know it, you are being viciously attacked every day. To help you understand how, I am going to teach you (for informational purposes only) how to weaponize social media, and build your own troll farm. If you can read, copy, and paste, then you can do this. Let’s begin. Continue Reading →